The Internet is now widespread use as personal computers become ubiquitous. The Internet links the entire world, and anyone easily accesses it for data collection. Web sites for providing a diversity of types of contents are connected to the Internet. Using the Internet, one can easily and quickly gain access to not only mere information, but also entertainment contents such as music, and software programs for video gaming.
In game playing using the Internet, an information terminal is not identified if a player is identified with an ID (identification) number and a password. A user can enjoy game playing on his home personal computer or on a computer in other places. Even if the user stops playing in the middle of a game, the progress of the game is saved in a Web site that provides a game content. For example, when the user suspends the game in the middle thereof at home, he may continue game playing until the end thereof on a personal computer in other places.
As mobile telephones such as PHS (Personal Handy-phone Systems) or portable telephones are widely used, more and more people communicate over mobile telephones. Multi-function mobile telephones, having a function of serving as an information terminal with an Internet connection capability, appear in the market. Among multi-function mobile telephones, some provide an “i mode” service available from the NTT DoCoMo in Japan (formerly, “Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Mobile Communications Network, Inc,”).
A Web browser and an E-mail software, which are standard applications working on the Internet, are installed in such a multi-function mobile telephone. Using the multi-function mobile telephone, the user views home pages set in numerous Web sites over the Internet. The user plays a video game on the multi-function mobile telephone by connecting the multi-function mobile telephone to a site that provides a game content and downloading the game content thereto. In this way, the user can enjoy video game playing anywhere.
A mobile telephone service company which provides mobile telephone service owns a gateway as a relay apparatus which interfaces a communication network to the Internet for the multi-function mobile telephone to gain access to the Internet. Since the multi-function mobile telephone accesses each site over the Internet through the gateway, the gateway recognizes that a pay content is downloaded from a pay site to the multi-function mobile telephone when the multi-function mobile telephone accesses the pay site. The mobile telephone service company thus bills a fee of the pay content to an owner of the multi-function mobile telephone. Since the multi-function mobile telephone is identified from a telephone number, the user is free from an operation to input an ID number and a password on the multi-function mobile telephone to identify himself.
With an information terminal such as a personal computer connected to the multi-function mobile telephone, the user may access each site over the Internet from the information terminal through a mobile telephone network. If the mobile telephone is combined with a mobile computer, the user can obtain required information from the Internet anywhere like with the multi-function mobile telephone.
When the information terminal connected to the multi-function mobile telephone accesses the Internet, the multi-function mobile telephone merely functions as an interface, and remains unrelated to the data exchanged between the information terminal and each site. When the multi-function mobile telephone does not directly access the Internet, the mobile telephone service company is unable to learn the content communicated by the multi-function mobile telephone from the standpoint of privacy protection. Since communications are performed between the information terminal and each site with the gateway bypassed, the company has a technical difficulty in learning the content communicated by the multi-function mobile telephone.
When the information terminal connected to the multi-function mobile telephone accesses the Internet, a billing destination needs to be clarified by inputting an ID number and a password. In this way, operational steps become more complex when the multi-function mobile telephone is used as a mere interface than when the multi-function mobile telephone itself accesses the Internet.